College of Arts & Letters appoints Luca Grillo to first-of-its-kind global humanities professorship at Notre Dame Rome
Luca Grillo, professor and chair of the Department of Classics, has been appointed to a first-of-its-kind position in the College of Arts & Letters — a professorship focused on the global humanities with an appointment connected not to a department, but to one of the University of Notre Dame’s global locations.
As the Rome Global Humanities College Professor, Grillo is charged with deepening the research collaborations between Arts & Letters and Notre Dame Rome and enriching the academic experience for graduate and undergraduate students before, during, and after they study abroad there.
“Serving as the liaison between the College of Arts & Letters and Notre Dame Rome is an exciting mandate to expand our global humanistic engagement,” Grillo said. “By driving new student exchange initiatives and weaving tighter collaborative ties with universities and institutions from Rome and across Italy, we will cultivate an enduring scholarly bridge that enriches both academic communities.”
In his new role, Grillo will spend one out of every six semesters at Notre Dame Rome, teaching one undergraduate course there and advising student research projects and leading collaborative workshops and co-teaching a graduate course with partner institutions in Rome. He will also seek to build relationships with archives, universities, and scholars in Rome that will advance the research of Notre Dame students and faculty, including his own.
During his semesters in South Bend, in addition to his regular teaching, research, and service responsibilities to the Department of Classics, Grillo will serve as a key resource for students preparing to study abroad in Rome. He will advise them on courses to take before their semester there, ensure they have completed the necessary language learning, and help them build the skills and connections necessary to conduct research there. When students return to Notre Dame, Grillo will help them further develop their research into senior thesis projects and advise on additional coursework that will build upon their experiences in Rome.
“As the world’s leading global Catholic research university, we strive for our students to acquire a global perspective in how they see the world and themselves in the world,” said Kenneth Scheve, the I.A. O’Shaughnessy Dean of the College of Arts & Letters. “With a leader like Luca strengthening the ties between Notre Dame and Rome, our students will be prepared to transform their time abroad into a defining experience that continues with them long after they come home.”
Grillo came to Notre Dame in 2018 after serving as the William R. Kenan, Jr. Scholar and associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and as an assistant professor at Amherst College. He holds a doctorate in classics from Princeton University, a master’s degree in classical and Near Eastern studies from the University of Minnesota, and a bachelor’s degree in literature and philosophy from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan.
A scholar of Latin and Greek language and literature, Roman history, and Augustan poetry, he is the author of books including How to Make Money: An Ancient Guide to Wealth Management (Princeton, 2024) and The Art of Caesar's Bellum Civile (Cambridge, 2012). He also wrote a commentary on Cicero's De Provinciis Consularibus Oratio (Oxford, 2015) and co-edited The Cambridge Companion to the Writings of Julius Caesar (Cambridge, 2017) with Christopher B. Krebs. He is currently working on a book on irony in Latin literature.
“By placing a scholar of Luca’s caliber at the very center of our Rome presence, we’re creating a model for how our faculty and students engage with the world in ever more dynamic and innovative ways,” said Michael Pippenger, Notre Dame’s vice president and associate provost for internationalization. “We’re grateful for the partnership with the College of Arts & Letters in imagining the power and impact of global humanities professorships.”
Grillo’s appointment is the first of this type that Scheve hopes to create, in partnership with Pippenger and Notre Dame Global, with the intent to have additional professorships tied to many of Notre Dame’s 11 other global locations.
“The humanities are the most vital way of understanding the human experience across time and cultures,” Scheve said. “To conduct influential research and shape the trajectories of our students, we must bring the best scholars into dialogue with people and traditions around the world — and a professorship like this makes that possible.”
Originally published by at al.nd.edu on September 30, 2026.